At the most basic level, the IT4IT Standard defines the “Digital Management” of “Digital Products” in order to create an efficient value delivery.

The IT4IT Standard is about defining the value stream, the associated functions, and the data objects needed to control the planning, development, delivery, and run management of Digital Products. This can be seen as a factory for digital.

Functionality groups provide an abstraction of what is needed to manage the new digital reality in a way that helps to simplify conversations between interested stakeholders. In the IT4IT Standard, we use it to describe a collection of functionality and data that is responsible for a well-defined part of the overall value creation. We describe the groups at a high level, and we decompose one level to have well-defined categories for defining the Supporting Functionality.

A traditional model for defining factories is Porter’s Value Chain concept [Porter]. This revision of the IT4IT Standard breaks with the Value Chain model and moves to the more recent concept of the Value Network. This reflects that value creation is a complex interaction within many systems and organizations.

For the second decomposition, a split is made with the Digital Product as an abstract entity in a set of data objects that form the essence of the Digital Product Backbone. This is complemented with seven new value streams that, together, explain how to define and manage the delivery of digital value.

A value stream is a representation of an end-to-end collection of value-adding activities that create an overall result for a customer, stakeholder, or end user. For more detailed treatment of the definition of value streams; see the TOGAF Series Guide: Value Streams [G178].

The Evaluate value stream is about the continuous assessment and evaluation of the entire Digital Product Portfolio to optimize the alignment of the Product Portfolio with the business strategy, including the identification of new Digital Product opportunities that support business and technology objectives.

The Explore value stream continuously explores new features and/or future directions of a Digital Product aligned with strategic direction and business needs. It ensures the Product Design evolves to facilitate innovation and optimize business outcomes.

The Integrate value stream continuously designs and builds new Product Releases and makes them ready for deployment to the market or the business. The Product Release is not limited to software development; this value stream is also applicable for the development of infrastructure building blocks and workplace services. The Product Release may be as large as an entire new product or as small as a hotfix or a patch.

The Deploy value stream deploys a Product Release into a production/operating environment (creating a new instance or updating/removing an existing instance). The scope of this value stream includes many different strategies for deploying Product Releases.

The Release value stream provides consumers with digital Service Offers that represent a new instance of a Digital Product or a change (including decommissioning) to an existing instance. A Service Offer defines how to subscribe to a Digital Product and all other lifecycle interactions the instance will have with its consumers, stakeholders, and support. The Service Offer can be made available for consumption through a self-service portal or through Application Program Interfaces (APIs).

The Consume value stream is triggered when an entitled human or system actor accepts a Service Offer related to a Digital Product. The value stream should support customer self-service and is not limited to a single engagement channel. It orchestrates the actions required to fulfill consumption of the offered service to ensure that the desired Digital Product is delivered within the agreed terms.

The Operate value stream manages the continuous operations of a deployed instance of a Digital Product in a continuous manner. It is responsible for maintaining availability and performance within the boundaries of agreed Service Contracts. The scope of this value stream includes managing any compliance and security aspects of running Digital Product Instances and underlying systems.

The seven IT4IT Value Streams are defined in Chapter 5. Each IT4IT Value Stream depends upon an end-to-end flow of work – via data objects – through multiple functional components to deliver the expected result for the customer, stakeholder, or end user. The IT4IT Standard defines functional components as the application building blocks for managing Digital Products. Related functional components are associated together into four functional groups. A further decomposition is made from the four high-level functional groups into eight (sub-functional groups that must be established in order to manage Digital Products: Strategy, Portfolio, Develop, Test, Consume, Fulfill, Support, and Assure.

Each functional group manages one or more data objects which are controlled by applications. The integrated data objects comprise the Digital Product Backbone and Service Offer Backbone which ensure traceability through the Digital Product Management lifecycle.

The IT4IT Standard defines seven value streams that manage the Digital Products. Information on the Digital Products is tracked through a set of interconnected data objects managed by functional components.